An Investigation on EFL Teachers’ Attitude toward Teaching Profession

Abstract

Teaching is described as a demanding job that requires in-depth knowledge of subject content, age-specific pedagogy, and many varied skills such as patience, leadership, and creativity. Teaching a foreign language constitutes another challenge for the teachers who are already attached the primary liability in raising generations for contributing to the development of their country. Considering that foreign language teachers’ attitudes toward their job largely influence their professional performance, this study aims to scrutinize whether attitude of EFL teachers toward teaching profession significantly differ across level of educational institutions where they are working. Accordingly, an attitude scale was administered to EFL teachers working at state primary schools, secondary schools, and institutions of higher education in Turkey. The results indicated that the majority of the participants have positive attitudes toward their job despite problems they encounter while performing it. The study reported and discussed research findings in comprehensively, and offered a few pedagogical implications, and suggestions for further directions.